Walk-On: My Reluctant Journey to Integration at Auburn University

By Jr. Thom Gossom

What are the odds of…

…a high school athlete playing his first organized football game in 11th grade and walking-on to a Southeastern conference collegiate program and earning a scholarship in his first year… becoming one of two African Americans on the team... and a three-year starter…

… that same

• Language: English
• Publisher: Best Gurl, inc
• Release date: Sep 1, 2008
• ISBN: 9780989086509

Jr. Thom Gossom

Thomas (Thom) Gossom, Jr. is a renaissance man in love with life. "I make the most of every day." Gossom is an actor, writer, speaker, and communications consultant. He received his Bachelor of Arts in communication from Auburn University in 1975. A starting wide receiver for the Tigers, from 1972-1974, Gossom was the first black athlete to graduate from Auburn University and is featured in the HBO special, Breaking the Huddle, about the integration of Southern College Football. Gossom received his MA in Communications from the University of Montevallo and began his career with AT&T/BellSouth where he served on the staff of the President of BellSouth Services. He and his wife joyce are owners of Best Gurl, inc. a unique multi-platform company committed to all forms of effective communication. They are supporters of higher education, libraries and literacy. Through 2016, Gossom served as the Chair of the Auburn University Foundation Board where he oversaw the successful Billion Dollar Campaign. He currently serves as a Director on the Auburn Research and Technology Foundation. As an actor, Gossom has starred in films including Fight Club, and Jeepers Creepers 2 and Miss Ever's Boys. On television he has been seen in The Quad, Love Is..., CSI, Boston Legal, and In the Heat Of The Night. Gossom's writing credits include his published memoir, Walk-On: My Reluctant Journey to Integration at Auburn University and his, Slice Of Life, short story collection. Motivational, funny, and insightful, Gossom is a frequent speaker for businesses, universities, corporations, and civic organizations.

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Table of Contents

From the Author

Foreword

The Amazins

[ 1970 ]

To Play Football at Auburn University

Doc and Cat

Auburn and Integration Collide

Henry and The Big O

Freshman Year

[ 1971 ]

Nigger’s Corner

Coach Ralph Shug Jordan

Something For The Entire Family!

Photographs

Red Shirt

[ 1972 ]

The Building of a Team

Fat Daddy & The Zoo

We’re Just Not Going To Have It Any Other Way

17-16

[ 1973 ]

The Intoxications of Life

You’ve Been Smoking Marijuana

The Misery of 6-6

[ 1974 ]

The Walkout

First and Ten

The Gossom Incident

[ 1975 ]

Graduation

[ 2002 ]

Amazing Again

[ 2016 ]

The Billion Dollar Man

Acknowledgements

About The Author

From the Author

I’ve reread Walk-On several times since it was first published in September 2008. Five years later and over forty years since the events described in this memoir, I am still brought to tears, reflection, and occasional laughter.

Walk-On has touched people from all over the world. Many have contacted me through email, Facebook, phone calls, and the U.S. Mail to tell me that something within these pages resonated with them, whether their own lives or feelings of empathy for those of us who were racial pioneers. I am most grateful.

I am most proud of The Auburn Nation, Alumni, teammates, friends, administrators, and students who have and continue to embrace Walk-On. More knowledgeable persons from that era have written me beautiful letters and notes of understanding. Some of those who lived through those days, but through ignorance or absorption in their own worlds, have expressed surprise and amazement. Current students who continually invite me to campus for lectures look on in awe, their admiration often bringing me tears and a huge dose of humility.

Finally I say to all, stay awake and aware. History is made everyday and often repeats.

Foreword

I was honored when Thom Gossom asked me to contribute the foreword to his memoir Walk-On. I’ve known Thom since our high school days. I wish I could say I knew him better back then, but I didn’t. I knew him in passing, the way a senior knows a sophomore, from a distance. After we were both at Auburn, I knew him a little better. He was a redshirt sophomore on the team during my senior year.

What I remember is Thom walked on the field without a scholarship and announced he wanted to play. The Auburn coaches recognizing a jewel had fallen into their laps were curious as to who and where this young black man had come from. They asked me and the other guys on our team from our old high school, John Carroll Catholic. I told them what I knew, which wasn’t much. He was fast. He had been a good athlete on bad teams in high school. He played basketball, had integrated the football team and everyone thought a lot of him. Also, we’d discovered we both loved the same disc jockey at the all black radio station in our hometown of Birmingham.

Undaunted by the challenge of resistance to the coming changes in our society, Thom earned a scholarship, becoming the first black player to do so successfully in Auburn’s and maybe Southeast Conference history. He made the travel squad my senior year, becoming an eager teammate, then started three years and became Auburn’s first black athlete to graduate.

Thom has written a memoir that captures the beginning of the biggest cultural change the southern sports landscape has experienced. Back then, I was aware of some of the changes taking place in our society, but traditions, and culture distance made what had been normal in a segregated society, abnormal in the changing south and the United States. Thom and James Owens, the other black player on our team were facing everyday obstacles that many of us were not aware of or took for granted.

Today, as a coach I try and instill in our players some of the lessons from those times; the journey of life, the foundation a young man can lay for his own future. I use Thom Gossom, as an example of a man who had a dream, a vision of himself that he never gave up on against all odds and in doing so he made that same journey possible for the many who have followed the trail he blazed.

As time has moved us all farther down the road to a clearer understanding of our own humanity, I have come to know him as a man of dignity, character, and understanding. More importantly I’m come to know him as my friend.

Pat Sullivan

Head Football Coach-Samford University

1971 Heisman Trophy Winner

Walk-On

[ 2002 ]

The Amazins

My car roared north up the beautiful stretch of I-85 that lies between Auburn University and home. It was one of those perfect Alabama fall days, the air was crisp, not yet cold. The trees put on a colorful show with their leaves of red and yellow. Just past the line of trees, open fields zoomed by. As we left Auburn, the familiar green blur of highway signs raced past: Tuskegee, 19 miles.

Without warning, a rush of tears started streaming down my face. They spilled over my cheeks and onto the new Auburn University t-shirt I bought the day before. It was like someone turned a spigot on and I tried to move my face so that my wife would not see.

Don’t get me wrong. I wasn’t hiding my tears because of some macho thing. I’m an actor. I cry for money, on cue when I must. However, this was private.

What is it? My wife asked. I couldn’t tell her. Not that I didn’t want to. It’s just that the pain came right from my gut, like it was being ripped out. Only once before did pent-up emotions rise up on me like this. I was in Los Angeles, about three months after my mom died; and was overcome by grief while stopped at a red light at Robertson and Pico.

This pain was different, though. I wasn’t angry or grieving; it was a cleansing process. I was letting go of three decades of pent-up anger and hurt. 

The look on my wife’s face let me know I needed to say something. I pulled the car over to the side of the interstate. After a few moments, I said, It’s taken me thirty years, but I finally feel like part of the team.

It started back in March 2002. My wife, joyce (she spells her name with a lowercase J), at our home in Florida, called me in Los Angeles where I was on the set. You got a letter from Terry Henley. Terry Henlo Henley was one of my college teammates from my days at Auburn University.

He was inviting me back to Auburn for a reunion.

March 28, 2002

Dear Teammate:

Thirty years ago this spring, we stepped onto the football field to try and show everybody in the country we were better than they said we were. No one will ever know, unless they participated that spring, what a rough and tough physical undertaking it was to complete that task. Once we were finished, I think everyone knew when we walked off the field what kind of team and season we were going to have. I know each of us is proud to know that Coach Jordan recognized the 1972 team as his favorite. Today, thirty years later, you go out and talk to people or pick up books and the 1972 team is still discussed among a very elite group. It has to make us all very proud.

The (Auburn) Athletic Department has telephoned to tell me they are going to recognize the 1972 team on its thirtieth anniversary at the Arkansas ball game during the upcoming football season. That game will be played on October 12 and we will all be introduced before the game.

Many people have asked that we get together Friday night before the game. The media wants to interview us.

…The media has been especially anxious to talk to all of you.

I hope everybody looks forward to this. It’s bound to be a very enjoyable evening. I’m anxious to hear from all of you. Hope to see you all soon.

Yours truly,

Terry Henley

My first thought was, I’m not going! Mixed emotions stumbled over themselves as they raced through my mind. It wasn’t that I didn’t love my alma mater. Auburn and I had a complicated history, but I’d made my peace. I had forgiven so much, but I hadn’t totally shaken the pain of those years. I didn’t want to open old wounds.

I called James. You going? I asked him over the long distance line from Los Angeles to Auburn.

I was going to call you, he said. I talked to Terry. Told him I’ll be there.

James Curtis Owens’ smooth melodious voice was as soothing as always. A minister now, James still has the same calming effect he had on us when we were students. Us black kids on campus always called him Daddy Owens, because he was always so calm and serene.

Our lives had taken divergent roads. James and I were the first two black players to play football at Auburn. For the first three years of my career we were inseparable, and not just because we were the only blacks on the team. We respected and liked each other.

All these years later, James lives just a few miles from Auburn University’s Jordan-Hare stadium, where we played our games. I ended up on the West Coast. 

You’re going? I asked, surprised that James was ready to cross the bridge to our past. I was worried about going back to see guys with whom I’d shared one of the most special times in my life.

In Alabama, college football legacies last a lifetime. Enthusiasts, talk show callers, and bloggers can quote plays, situations, names, coaching decisions, and legends from decades ago. Time had not dimmed their enthusiasm for the team that had been dubbed The Amazins.

We were always underdogs; favored in only two games. We didn’t have any stars, rarely threw the ball, and on most Saturdays we were not the physically superior team. Despite all that, we won, game after game after game, against all odds.

Ten out of eleven games we walked off the field victorious. After the horn sounded, the other team and coaches would claim they were better and should have won.

The scoreboard would tell a different story. We outscored our opponents 209-141. We beat three Top Ten teams. We ended the nation’s longest winning streak, twice. We worked harder. We worked smarter. We grew to be special. We ended up ranked number five in the country. It’s a legacy we will carry to our graves. The Amazins.

My wife had never been to Auburn. She’d never experienced a football Saturday in the loveliest village on the plains. She’d never seen the eagle flying around the stadium before kickoff, the hordes of tailgaters, the fans all dressed up in orange and blue, lining the sidewalk by the thousands, for the players in the Tiger Walk.

I hadn’t been back since 1995. Living in Florida while working in Los Angeles didn’t make it easy. I’d only been to a handful of games since the last game I played in the 1974 Gator Bowl. I moved on when I moved on.

I was the first black athlete to graduate from Auburn in 1975, but there was no alumni network for me. There were fewer than 100 black Auburn alumni total, and only one in my hometown. In the mid-eighties, I was invited as the only black to sit on the inaugural board of directors of the Auburn Football Lettermen Club. In the middle of a meeting one of the guys dropped the ‘N’ word. The meeting ended uncomfortably for all. I wasn’t invited back.

Now I was going back to a reunion.

Other than my teammates and the other black guys on campus, I didn’t have many friends. Practices, school, games, and the newness of having black students in class made it hard for me to get to know my fellow students. Still, it would be good to see the guys I played with. We shared a common bond. We were warriors. We accepted the challenges the coaches laid before us. We worked in heat, cold, rain, outdoors, indoors, and under the stadium. We sacrificed for the greater good of the team. No individual identities. We were Coach Ralph Shug Jordan’s boys. We forged a bond that was still strong thirty years later.

On the field, we experienced success and a feeling of togetherness. Off the field, James and I experienced loneliness, isolation, anger, and racism. Being a trailblazer didn’t seem so glamorous at the time.

The night of the reunion came and joyce and I were riding an elevator up to the opening reception. I’ve played ball in front of 70,000 people. I’ve done live theater. I’ve done television shows that have been seen by millions. Films I’ve acted in have played all over the world. I’m never nervous. I always know I can perform when called upon. Except for this night. I was nervous.

The elevator door opened and there he stood, the 1972 Most Valuable Player in the Southeastern Conference, Terry Henley. His infectious smile froze me. Then other guys rushed up to us and I was caught up in a sea of well meaning former teammates.

A murmur went through the crowd as the Reverend James Owens and his wife Gloria stepped out and into the room. The most beloved member of the 1972 team, the guys gathered around James like he was a rock star. One of the guys called James out by his old football nickname, proudly proclaiming, The ‘Big O’ is in the house!

What a night! I ran into coaches, trainers, news reporters, managers, and teammates. There were plenty of laughs, lies, and stories. We posed for photos and signed footballs for charity.

I realized something that night. All of us had lived through a time of change in our society. It was not just James and I who had lived in and through a painful era. We all had.

Things would never be the way they were. Odds are, a coach will never stay at Auburn twenty-five years like Coach Jordan. Also, it would be the last time Auburn would field a team with only two black players. That night, James and I received the respect for the contribution we made to Auburn football.

After a while, I was so giddy I didn’t mind when a reporter, eager for a quote, came up to me and said, James, let me ask you about that punt you ran back against Florida. I laughed and corrected him,  I’m not James, I’m the other one.

As the night ended, my teammates went out of their way to make James and me feel that we belonged. The conclusion to this story had finally been written. It had taken thirty years.

[ 1970 ]

Chapter 1

To Play Football at Auburn University

Midnight, New Year’s Day, 1970, Daddy raised the old double-barrel shotgun, aimed at the night sky and fired. With a loud boom the buckshot tore into the woods behind our house. He waited a couple of seconds. He looked at me with a grin, his white teeth gleaming in the dark. Boom. Another round of buckshot tore from the gun.

The gun had been my great-grandfather’s. It had been passed down to his son to his son, and one day it would belong to me.

You want to shoot? my dad asked. Nah, I answered.

When I was twelve, I begged to shoot that gun. Daddy, Daddy, let me shoot, I would plead. Nah, he answered. The kick is too strong. Yet, when I protested long enough, he gave in. Okay. He handed the big, heavy gun over.

Boom! The old double-barrel’s kick lifted me off my feet, sent me reeling into the side of the house. I couldn’t feel my numbed shoulder, but I pretended I wasn’t hurt. You want to shoot the other barrel? Dad asked. No, that’s okay. Lesson learned.

It was a Birmingham tradition in black neighborhoods all over town to erupt in good-natured gunfire at midnight on New Year’s Eve. All up and down our street, people blasted into the air over the woods. Traditionally, you shot out the old, and brought in the new.

Fireworks and shotguns went off everywhere.

On New Year’s Day, children played in the streets with their still new, shiny Christmas bicycles, wagons, black dolls, white dolls, cowboy outfits, and for me, my football uniform.

It was also a day filled with family and friends. Uncles, aunts, and cousins came by in a steady stream all day. We wouldn’t see them again until the next holiday season and my dad would buy a bottle of whiskey for the occasion.

Mom spent all day in the kitchen, assisted by my sisters. The aroma of fried chicken and cornbread coming from the kitchen was deliciously thick. I ran back and forth all morning asking Is it ready yet?

Dad chopped a block of ice and he and I hand cranked our old ice cream maker filled with cream, sugar, ice, and vanilla.

That afternoon was filled with crispy fried chicken, buttery cornbread, and macaroni and cheese. Mom cooked black-eyed peas for health and collared greens for money. Homemade vanilla ice cream was joined by dark, rich, chocolate cake.

After dinner, we kicked back and enjoyed college football’s biggest day. The games in 1970 on New Year’s Day were the Sugar Bowl, Rose Bowl, Orange Bowl, and Cotton Bowl. I watched all of them.

But it was the game the night before that had really held my interest. I’d watched the University of Houston put a 36-7 whupping on my favorite team, the Auburn Tigers, in the Bluebonnet Bowl.

I loved watching and listening to Auburn games. That New Year’s Eve, I had a resolution. Each year, Mom would always insist we write our resolutions down. Set your goals. That way you know you can’t fall short.

This year I had a secret resolution. I went into my room and shut the door. Write it down, rang in my ears. Pen and paper in hand, I pondered. Dare I write it? If I wrote it, I’d have to do it.

I’d been planning to do it since the fourth grade, but I knew plenty of reasons I would not get to. Racism, lack of money, segregation, and fear were all good reasons for me to back down.

I scribbled the words down. I looked on them with pride. I buried the paper deep in my brown wallet. Didn’t tell Mama. Didn’t tell Daddy. They would be afraid for me. I figured they’d know soon enough. That piece of paper would remain in my wallet for the next four years.

Naiveté can be a beautiful thing. The fact that I’d grown up in the fiercely segregated south of Birmingham, Alabama never deterred me. Nothing ever made me think I couldn’t do what I wanted.

Why would it? I’d grown up a Rover Boy.

In the tiny library of Our Lady of Fatima Catholic School, I’d gotten hooked on The Rover Boys, a series of books by Arthur M. Winfield about life in the early 1900s. I first met The Rover Boys in The Rover Boys at School. When I discovered these three brothers, I would spend long afternoons on trips around the world while never leaving home. I soon journeyed alongside the boys in the rest of the books, The Rover Boys on the Ocean, The Rover Boys in the Jungle, The Rover Boys Out West.

Tom, Dick, Sam, and I got to be buddies. Every adventure they had, I traveled along with them. They didn’t merely have adventures; their lives were adventures. So why not mine? I figured the only difference between me and the Rover Boys was they were rich.

While books and an education gave me a taste of what was possible, they were not the only reasons for my confidence. Even though we were deep in the dark ages of segregation and racism, my parents, relatives, and neighborhood showered me with affection and support. I was allowed to dream. Our neighborhood of blue-collar, hard-working people, primarily from rural Alabama towns, could see times were changing.

The civil rights movement, the women’s liberation movement, and the Vietnam War protests were broadcast daily into our living rooms. Watching the evening news, we saw the body bags from Vietnam, we saw the war protesters being bullied by National Guardsmen, we saw children in Birmingham being hit with water bursts from fire hoses and attacked by police dogs. Television brought us somber photos of Emmett Till, the young black boy in Mississippi killed for whistling at a white woman. I remember watching the chilling scene of the Chicago dormitory where Richard Speck killed eight student nurses. Assassinations, murders, wars, sit-ins, and presidential debates were all brought into our living rooms nightly through the power of television; first in black and white, then in color.

Slowly, grudgingly, the changes came to the South and our small community of Rosalind Heights. When the prodding of the federal government and a determined citizenry came knocking in Birmingham, doors swung open. Black people could explore options never before possible. They were able to govern their own lives.

The elders of my community fought the civil rights fight for us younger ones. We were charged to take the baton of change and run headlong into the New South with it.

Dad worked three jobs most of my life. He did what it took for my two sisters and me to attend Catholic schools for twelve years, then college. My mom sewed our clothes, made creative dinners, and ruled the house; ensuring that we would be good citizens and make positive contributions to our community and country. My parents insisted that we were going to college. It wasn’t a hope or a suggestion. It was mandatory.

My sisters and I attended Our Lady of Fatima, an all-black school with black lay teachers, white nuns, a white priest, and mass every morning. There were no sports teams. No physical education. No band or debate teams; nothing but school and the little library.

After school, the boys would organize games on the big empty field a block from the school. After I ripped a tear in the knee of my blue uniform pants, I started bringing an extra pair of old pants for our games.

Upon graduation from Our Lady of Fatima, I fought my mom to go to the public high school with my neighborhood buddies, Cool, Duck, Pat, and Bubba, but Mama would have none of it.

Mama felt we’d get a better education at the Catholic school. When my friends at the black public school received their books, they would already be signed with another kid’s name. The books were hand-me-downs from the white kids. Many of the materials and equipment in the black public schools were used and had been passed down from the white public schools.

Going to Catholic schools in my white shirt and navy blue pants, earned me the nickname white boy from some of the kids in our neighborhood. Mama knew